On the Music of Emergent Behaviour What can Evolutionary Computation bring to the Musician?

This paper focuss on issues concerning musical composition practices in which the emergent behaviour of computational processes is used to generate either musical material, musical form, or both. Special attention will be given to the potential of cellular automata and adaptive games for music-making. We begin the paper with an introduction to CAMUS and Chaosynth, two cellular automata-based music systems of our own design, followed by an assessment of their role in the composition of a number of successful pieces. The paper continues with a discussion on the potential and limitations of computational models for music composition followed by concluding remarks whereby the author suggests that adaptive imitation games may hold the key to foster more effective links between evolutionary computation paradigms and creative musical processes.